Emacs vs Spacemacs

Customizations can be made to a wide range of Emacs' functions through a Lisp dialect (Emacs Lisp). A robust list of existing Lisp extensions include the practical (git integration, syntax highlighting, etc) to the utilitarian (calculators, calendars) to the sublime (chess, Eliza).

You can use Emacs' command line interface or graphical user interface.

You can debug, compile, manage files, integrate with version control systems, etc. All through the various plugins that can be installed.

Emacs can be controlled entirely with the keyboard. While true, I often find the mouse and menus handy for those lesser-used commands. An aide-memoir.

Emacs has extensive help support built-in as well as a tutorial accessed with C-h t.

Licensed under GNU GPL.

With 30+ years of use the Emacs documentation is very thorough. There are also a lot of tutorials and guides written by third parties.

You can pass complicated arguments in the mini buffer.

Advanced planning and publication which can start as a simple list.

Fully compliant GNU-emacs is available on many platforms, and they all understand .emacs configuration files.

Emacs can select rectangularly.

Evil mode emulates vim behaviors within Emacs. It enables Vi users to move inside the Emacs universe.

With lisp customization, any behavior of Emacs can be changed. Update with pre-release patch can be also applied without recompiling the whole Emacs.

Evil is an extensible vi layer for Emacs. It provides Vim features like Visual selection and text objects.

Dynamic word completion.

Through its programmability, a very broad range of functionalities can be integrated in emacs, turning it even into a "single point of contact" with the underlying operating system.

Review the "Emacs Rocks" video.

The first verion of Emacs was written in 1974 and GNU Emacs in 1984.

Emacs is great for everything.

Works on Linux, Windows, Macintosh, BSD, and others.

You can jump straight from your org-mode files to programming tasks - and back - and build a seamless workflow.

Powerful commands, search, and more with the Helm plugin.

Since version 25 you can run GTK widgets inside Emacs buffers. One of these is the WebKitGTK+, which allows the user to run a full-featured web browser inside Emacs with JavaScript and CSS support among other things.

The tutorial you are presented with at startup shows you exactly what you need to get started and teaches you how to use the built-in help yourself later.

Emacs has a number of shell variants: ansi-term, shell, and eshell.

Complex git history editing become a breeze with very few keystrokes. And simple ones are quickly stashed in muscle memory. Git becomes an direct extension of your brain thanks to Magit. Cherrypicking, blaming, resetting, interactive rebasing, line level commit, spinoff branches... you name it, magit already has it and has typically all those 5 to 10 git CLI commands of higher-level patterns also tide to one simple shortcut (want to amend a commit three commits away ? forgot to branch out and you've got already N commits on master ? ... etc... ).

Managing several large mailing lists has never been easier using Gnus. The threading commands and the various ways of scoring articles means that I never miss important messages/authors, etc. A joy to use.

You can use the underlying operating system shell as a terminal emulation in an Emacs buffer. Don't like the default shell for your configuration? You can change it to your liking.

Built-in packages make editing Lisp source code feel natural.

Missing some neural package that predicts actions, maybe in the next release ...

Spacemacs combines the Emacs platform (with the full power of the Emacs plugin ecosystem) and the Vi keybindings (via EViL), all in the same box.

At the heart of Spacemacs, the configuration layers group packages configuration into semantic units that can be toggled on and off. The architecture is simple but powerful, allowing the user to easily manage configuration dependencies between hundreds of packages.

Spacemacs is the biggest community-driven Emacs starter-kit.

There's no need to reach for the mouse again since Spacemacs can be fully controlled with keyboard.

Evil package is a first class citizen and Spacemacs embraces it from day one. Evil package allows Vim users to be productive very quickly while still allowing regular Emacs users to use Spacemacs.

Emacs runs on Gnu/Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.

Documentation is mandatory for each new configuration layer and can be accessed directly within the editor in Org format.

The community surrounding Spacemacs is very active and there is a welcoming gitter chat for users to ask questions.

Allows for great organization applications that can be saved in future-proof format, plain text, can be integrated with org, LaTeX, markdown, HTML, Literate Programming and be committed to source control.

Spacemacs has some great features for taking notes, tracking to-do lists, and tracking time.

Stuff like version control, file management, good default theme are all configured out of the box.

Space-lead key bindings are organized in mnemonic namespaces. For instance, buffer actions are under SPC b, file actions are under SPC f, project actions are under SPC p, search actions are under SPC s, and so on. Keybindings are consistent across the whole distribution thanks to a set of conventions.

Spacemacs got its name from the fact that it is uses the space bar as a default leader key. The key was chosen because it is easy to press and to hopefully lower the risk of RSI.

New functionalities and fixes are added to Spacemacs every day, while release cycles are short.

Files can be edited in Spacemacs remotely.

LaTeX allows for auto-completion, syncing, and more.

Sometimes you only have terminal access, over ssh or something.

Has great daemon support, which can mitigate the issue of slow startup.

Syntax highlighting and org-babel extensions.

Elixir layer which uses the Alchemist package is the best way to edit Elixir code out there.